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Wake County outlines $67M+ opioid-settlement spending plan and early program wins
Summary
Opioid-settlement program manager Lissa Kittless told the committee the county is set to receive over $67 million (possibly nearing $76M when dashboards update), reported a 2024 decline in overdose deaths to about 162, and reviewed settlement-funded expansions in mobile treatment, naloxone distribution and transitional housing.
Lissa Kittless, Wake County's opioid-settlement program manager, presented the county's multiyear settlement strategy and early implementation outcomes, saying the county is "set to receive over $67,000,000 over an 18 year period" and that 2024 marked the first decline in overdose deaths since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. "So we're at about 162 individuals," she said of 2024 overdose deaths.
Kittless described the North Carolina funding framework (the 2021 North Carolina memorandum of agreement) that guides allowable settlement uses and noted Wake County's approved multiyear spending plan for FY2026'FY2027. She said the county scaled a competitive process that selected roughly 21 organizations to implement strategies ranging from prevention and naloxone distribution to mobile medication-assisted treatment and recovery supports; current budgeting targets a multi-year annual plateau in the neighborhood of $6.0'$6.75 million for core programmatic spending.
Kittless highlighted program wins and metrics: more than 4,000 recovery-support contacts reported, about 134 free buprenorphine prescriptions provided through a county pharmacy partnership, nearly 5,000 naloxone kits reported distributed (with some duplication in reporting), and expansion of transitional housing (an Emmaus House second home for eight people). She also summarized a successful mobile opioid treatment program led by Morse Clinic, which launched in July and has enrolled more than 150 people, and a detention-center collaboration with Southlight Healthcare that has provided medication to more than 600 individuals and started 96 people on treatment in the last year.
Kittless said Wake County will also release a one-time-appropriation RFP in March using $331,532.88 from a separate settlement (identified on the agenda as McKinsey/McKenzie) that is not bound by the NC memorandum of agreement and is intended to fund education, prevention and early-intervention projects that complement the larger settlement program.
